Random Moosings - The Brooklyn Brawler vs. The Canadian Crippler

Bet you thought this was going to be the review of some awful Superstars squash match, didn’t you? Well not so fast my friends!

About a week ago legendary college football coach Joe Paterno passed away. If you don’t know who Joe Paterno is, then you have been living under a rock for the last 46 years, and you have been living somewhere near middle earth for the last six months or so. Paterno coached Penn State for 46 years, a feat that is remarkable in this day and age of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately college athletics. These days coaches are not on a year to year basis, hell big time coaches are not even on a game to game basis. One bad play and half the fan base and all the boosters are screaming for them to be fired RIGHT DAMN NOW! We have reached the point of epic stupidity in the ways we view athletics.

Paterno’s story has, to me at least as a lifelong Penn State fan, a sad ending. He was implicated in a child sex scandal that had stretched on for decades. The Readers Digest version is this: creepy, insane scumbag former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was caught in the showers with a little boy by a grad assistant. The grad assistant, understandably horrified by what he was seeing, went to Paterno. Paterno, instead of taking a steel chair upside Sandusky’s head, went to the PSU athletic director and told him what was going on, and the Athletic Director then went to…….well evidently he didn’t go anywhere or do anything and Sandusky was allowed to continue to molest children for another decade.

When the story broke, Paterno was blamed for not doing more. After all, he was Joe Fucking Paterno. He WAS Penn State football. He was a legend, and icon…..a LICON if you will, if Joe Paterno spoke up and said the campus grass was being cut 1/8th of an inch too high, you can bet you ass that the next time it was cut, it would be cut 1/8th an inch shorter. So why didn’t he do more? Why didn’t he see that his Athletic Director was a do-nothing dipshit and go to the authorities himself? Why didn’t Paterno bust into Sandusky’s house and choke him out until he admitted he was a dirty pedophile? Why didn’t he challenge him to an “I Confess” match right in the middle of Beaver Stadium? I don’t know the answers to that. I have no idea why Paterno didn’t act. What I do know is that his 46 year tenure as Penn State head coach came to a whimper of an end in December when he was fired. I do know that his legacy was tarnished. I do know, that as a fan, it just wasn’t supposed to end like this.

Now, what does this have to do with Chris Benoit? And I would imagine there are some of you that are asking “what is a Chris Benoit?” Chris Benoit was one of my favorite professional wrestlers of all time, he is also considered by many to be among the best wrestlers of all time. What he lacked in mic skills (which was a lot, he was not a great promo guy) he more than made up for in in-ring ability. Benoit made his debut in Canada in 1985 and spend the better part of the next decade plying his trade around the world. He got his big break in ECW in the mid-90’s by famously breaking Sabu’s neck (which from what I can tell was an accident, Sabu fell on his head after a back drop. I honestly have no idea if it happened there, or if it was a storyline driven thing) anyway, that gave Benoit the nickname of Canadian Crippler, and just to look at him, yeah you got the impression that Benoit could rip your head off before you could beg him to stop.

Benoit moved from ECW to WCW, then when WCW was on the verge of being put out of business by Hogan and Bischoff, he moved to the WWE. Benoit won the world title and appeared to be on the verge of true superstardom when he snapped and killed his wife and child, then himself. Yeah you read that right, Benoit, a world class wrestler, respected by millions, idolized, worshipped by wrestling fans, murdered his wife and child, and then killed himself. The fact that his brain was like Swiss cheese, the result of numerous concussions, doesn’t excuse or change what he did. In the end, you can say nothing more than he was a murderer.

So what the hell do Chris Benoit and Joe Paterno have in common?

Other than the fact that Paterno could probably have been Benoit’s manager, not a whole lot really, except for one thing – both of them ended their careers – and ultimately their lives – on unspeakably bad terms.

Ok, so that is an interesting coincidence, but that is not really what I am getting at. What bothers me is the media and fan portrayal of both men. I remember after Benoit murdered his family hearing from people that were huge fans of Benoit that they would never watch his matches again, they just couldn’t. And to be honest, I never understood that. I have heard people who had praised Joe Paterno for being such a great coach and a great leader of men, just months ago, suddenly turn on him and say they will never respect him again, and that he is somehow a villain. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think either are villains, I think both are humans.

Let me clarify that a bit, I don’t excuse what either of them did, what they did was wrong. But they are both human, they are imperfect, fallible creatures. I am not sure it is fair, or right, that a bad end erases a lifetime of achievement. The WWE has done its absolute best to completely whitewash Benoit from their history. The 25th anniversary of the WWE’s Royal Rumble is tomorrow. If you were to ask, I am sure they would tell you that there was no winner in 2004. The event simply did not happen. I certainly don’t think Penn State will go to the same lengths as the WWE, I can’t imagine them ignoring the last 46 years of Penn State football because Paterno had a horrible ending, nor should they.

Those of you who know me know that I was a history major in college. One of the things you learn (other than citing your sources, beat you to it Solly) is that history is not just the good things that happen. That is part of what bothers me about US history, it tends to skew VERY much toward the positives of the US and leaves a whole bunch of the negative stuff out (but that is a rant I can save for later). Whether they like it or not, the history of the WWE and Penn State contain ties to two men who did very bad things. That doesn’t mean you get to whitewash it and ignore it. Own up to it. People make mistakes. Good people do bad things. One bad decision should not destroy a career of greatness.

I still miss watching Chris Benoit wrestle and I know that come fall, I will miss seeing Joe Paterno on the Penn State sidelines. They made an indelible mark on their professions, and they both did a whole lot of good before they made horrible decisions. There is nothing wrong with celebrating the good while lamenting the bad.